Communicating Toward The Tipping Point: Igniting Social Epidemics through STEM Stories

in Popular Media

Sharon Campbell Waters, Ph.D.Tidewater Community College

July 20, 2006National Science Foundation

Arlington, VAswaters@tcc.edu

…initiating a dialogue about the creation, implementation, and publication of social

epidemics in popular media

Guiding Questions• What should Public Information

Officers know about the general public in order to communicate University-based STEM research? What are the ways the public responds to knowledge?

• How should Public Information Officers report what they know about University-based STEM research?

• What are some of the strategies that will ignite social epidemics in University-based STEM research?

Fictional Representations Matter...• …the science and technology we

ultimately see are partly shaped by the images of the work which exist outside the confines of the laboratory report or the scientific paper (Turney, 1998, p. 3).

• While news and other non-fictional treatments of STEM fields, and particular roles within them, help shape public perceptions, it may be fictional depictions and accounts that have the greatest influence.

Among Recent Findings from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Science &

Engineering Indicators (2006):• Television is still the main source of

information about S&T, but the Internet is a strong competitor.

• Most Americans do not think they are well informed about S&T. While most have positive attitudes about the benefits of S&T, some have reservations (moral issues, etc.).

• Surveys on topics ranging from the environment to nanotechnology reveal a variety of perceptions and concerns.

• But most importantly is the finding that:

Television, along with Other Emerging Information and Communication Technologies Influence What Adults Know and Think About

Science• Of the comprehensive list (Table 7-1) of

prime-time science programs on television in 2005, none of the 29 shows are on broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, UPN, or WB) and only 3 are on PBS, the networks received by nearly all households.

• However, the race is on to bring TV to the even smaller screen. “Webisodes” are now being streamed through nbc.com and cbs.com

• Students who have grown up immersed in digital technologies learn differently (non-linear) from many of those who are teaching them.

Three Great Ways of Responding to Knowledge1. The Hedgehog Way

• …Knows one great and effective strategy…

• Needs only one principle that directs its life

• Represents the methodical persistence of science…the hedgehog always returns to its one great and effective strategy of rolling up with its spines exposed in response to danger.

• Culture of evidence: “Evidence never contains its own explanation” (Alford, 1998)

• Knowledge production – generates new ideas by means of empirical investigation

• Helps clarify “is” questions

2. The Fox• ...devises many strategies to escape its predators• Travels many roads, according to the idea that there

can be different, equally valid but mutually incompatible concepts of how to live

• Reflects the creative flexibility of the arts• Culture of Inquiry—we exercise craftsmanship in the

inquiry process…we recognize each of us brings personal perspectives and experiences to the interpretation of evidence.

• We understand that how we decide what information to collect, whom to involve in data interpretation, and how to communicate results can be as important as the results themselves.

• Emphasis shifts from the data to the decision-maker as the locus of change.

• Knowledge transmission• Helps to clarify “ought” questions of ethics and

morality.

3. The Magister’s Pox• Proposes a consilient

worldview – E Pluribus Unum (from the many, One).

Hedgehogs, Foxes, and Magister’s Poxes in History

Hedgehogs Foxes Magister’s Pox

Plato Aristotle Tolstoy Pascal Montaigne Hegel Erasmus Nietzsche Goethe Dostoyevsky Joyce Proust Shakespeare

HOW SHOULD PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICERS REPORT WHAT THEY KNOW?

• Ignite a social epidemic in University-based STEM research via popular media

• According to Gladwell (2002) The Tipping Point is the biography of an idea…the phenomena of word of mouth.

• Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do (p. 7).

• The possibility of sudden change is at the center of the idea of The Tipping Point. Tipping is about a specific idea permeating through society.

• The Tipping Point is the magical moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point (p. 12). Tipping happens only when a special person comes along, grabs an idea, and passes it on.

All Epidemics have Tipping Points. Wanted: Mavens, Connectors, Salesmen (women)

• The Law of the Few states there are exceptional people who are capable of starting epidemics:– Mavens - Mavens have the knowledge and the social skills to start

word-of-mouth epidemics. Information brokers. Data banks. What sets Mavens apart, though, is not so much what they know but how they pass it along (p. 67). Mavens provide the message.

– Connectors - are social glue. They spread the message. – Salesmen(women) - A select group of people with the skills to persuade

us when we are unconvinced of what we are hearing. • Are you a Maven, a Connector, or a Salesman (woman)? Or

all three?

Social Epidemics of SET Roles in Popular Media

• 1816--Frankenstein - “The governing myth of modern biology” (Turney, 1998, p. 3). According to Turney, the theme of the Frankenstein myth is the “getting and using of knowledge and the power that knowledge may confer” (p. 13).

• To make his creature, Victor Frankenstein “dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave” and frequented dissecting rooms and slaughterhouses.

• What gives this particular story its appeal? Used as a weapon of terror to scare people away from scientific advances?

STAR TREK• 1966 - Created by Gene Roddenberry. In March

and April 1977, NASA produced a television commercial with Lieutenant Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) who, surrounded by models of the Space Shuttle and the Enterprise, encouraged qualified minorities and women to apply to NASA. Although a previous yearlong recruitment drive had garnered only a hundred applications from women and fewer than thirty-five from minorities, after Nichols’ commercial aired, NASA received over 8,000 applications, 1,649 from women an over 1,000 from minorities. Three African American astronaut trainees were selected: Guy Bluford, Frederick Gregory, and Ron McNair.

• NASA’s first space shuttle was named “Enterprise”• First TV show to have an episode preserved in the

Smithsonian, where an 11-foot model of the U.S.S. Enterprise is exhibited on the same floor as the Wright brothers’ original airplane and Lindbergh’s “Spirit of St. Louis.”

CSI, CSI NY, CSI Miami• 2001 - (Also, Crossing Jordan,

Cold Case, Law and Order, Forensic Files, Bones) - According to U.S. News & World Report, television’s diet of forensic fantasy projects the image that all cases are solvable by highly technical science, and if you offer less than that, it is viewed as reasonable doubt. The burden it places on prosecutors is overwhelming. Prosecutors have named the phenomenon: “the CSI effect.”

NUMB3RS…Potential Social Epidemic?

• 2005 – a drama about an FBI agent who recruits his mathematical-genius brother to help the Bureau solve a wide range of challenging crimes in Los Angeles.

• Provides interactive “We All Use Math Everyday” website for viewers – http://www.cbs.com/primetime/numb3rs/about.shtml

• Therefore, how science has proved itself to be a powerful way of dealing with certain aspects of our experience must be communicated to the public.

Notable Mavens, Connectors and Sales(wo)men in History

• Leonardo daVinci• Albert Einstein• Louis Pasteur• Benjamin Banneker• George Washington Carver• Gene Roddenberry• Madame Curie• Michael Ambrosino (created NOVA in the

early ‘70s amidst wide-spread skepticism that anybody would watch a science show on television. Believed science is a story!)

• Shirley Jackson• Shirley Malcolm• YOU

Strategies for Creating Social Epidemics in STEM Research Stories

• OLD Media– Print (Press releases)– Radio– Television– Film

• NEW Media– Computer/Internet– Video Games– Cell Phones– Blogs (WebLogs.com; mtvU.com—an online only channel

for college students; MySpace--the 7th most frequented website in the world according to Media Matrix)

– Podcasts

Consilient Media -- Coming to a Cell Phone Near You

• Live television - How much would you be willing to pay to watch your favorite science/engineering show?– While users already can get video on their mobile phones

through their cellular phone companies, that information robs tremendous capacity from the carriers’ networks.

– Instead, new technologies use separate antennas in metro areas to beam TV signals directly to cell phones, in much the same way broadcast television has worked for decades.

– Will provide greater opportunities for science/engineering shows to “tip”!

– According to Time magazine, today’s children see the screen as an environment to be explored, inhabited, shared and shaped (March 27, 2006)

Promote Discoveries of University-Based Research

• http://www.edutopia.org (The George Lucas Educational Foundation)

• Field a group of experts that the media can turn to for objective information on recent advances and discoveries at your university.

• Find imaginative ways to link science stories with headline news, introduce science content into popular news topics and provide essential, unbiased information about complicated or controversial science-related issues that affect people’s lives.

Funding Sources to Tip Ideas• In addition to NSF’s Informal Science

Education and Communicating Research Programs, try:

• Albert P. Sloan Foundation-Public Understanding of Science and Technology-http://www.sloan.org/ With Sloan Foundation support, six leading film schools are awarded prizes to stimulate students to write and produce new film and television shows about scientists and engineers;

• National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA) – www.nciia.org

References• Alford, R. (1998). The craft of inquiry: Theories, methods, evidence.

Oxford Univ. Press: Oxford.• Berlin, I. (1953). The hedgehog and the fox: An essay on Tolstoy’s view

of history. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London.• Gould, S. J. (2003). The hedgehog, the fox and the magister’s pox:

Mending the gap between science and the humanities. Harmony Books: New York.

• Gould, S. J. (2004). The hedgehog, the fox and the magister’s pox: Mending and minding the misconceived gap between science and the humanities. Vintage: United Kingdom.

• Gladwell, M. (2002). The tipping point: How little things can make a big difference.

• National Science Foundation (2006). Science and engineering indicators (annual reports). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing

Office.• Roane, K. R. (2005). The CSI effect. U.S. News & World Report.

Available online at http://www.usnews.com/usnews/culture/articles/050425/25csi.htm

• Turney, J. (1998). Frankenstein’s footsteps: Science, genetics, and popular culture. Yale University Press: New Haven.